Do you often feel that you don’t have time, money, or energy? Or two or all of them at once? What does it say about how you vote with these three precious resources? How can NLP help you always have enough time, money, and energy?

Every minute we’re voting with our time.

Hence we say yes to one activity and inevitably no to another. We’re voting. Time is a limited commodity for all of us. We have 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week, 8,760 hours in a year. If you lived to a 100, you’d live 876,000 hours from the moment of birth to the moment of death. That is well under a million hours in a lifetime. You’d need to live to 114 to clock up a million hours on this planet.

Many of us would like to be able to squeeze more hours out of a day. Hence we study time management strategies and creative scheduling techniques. We try to figure out how to do several things at once.

So how do you want to spend your time? How do you spend your time now? A useful exercise is to track how you’re spending time for one week. One coaching client was often spending hours running around supermarkets for bargains. This time was cutting down on the time he spent with his family! So he used the information to change his habit.

By reading this blog you have voted to devote time to personal [and professional] growth, learning, improving the quality and enjoyment of life. There’re a million ways you could spend these moments. But here you are. Hence what values are you voting for by reading these words?

NLP ways to explore how you vote with your time:

How do you use your time in any context of life?

How could you reduce or eliminate the sense of time pressure you feel?

Similarly, how do your choices about how you spend time reflect your highest values?

What have you learnt about yourself and spending time?

Do you often find yourself rushing? What’s the cost of that to you?

How do you want to spend the time you have left on this planet?

You’re also voting with each amount of money you spend.

Spending money is a political act as much as or even more so than casting your vote on election day. Every time you buy a product or service you’re helping an individual or a corporation to stay in business. Your vote says that you want the product or service to exist in the world.

Yet there’re people who complain that there’re too many chain eateries in town and the family ones seem to be disappearing. These people wish they could enjoy more of the atmospheric family-owned establishments. Yet when they go out to eat, convenience often takes over and they end up at a chain restaurant. Their vote for family-owned eateries skips the essential step of financially supporting them.

Most of us are directly responsible for deciding how we vote with money. How do your expenditures reflect your values? How do you choose to contribute to causes that are important to you? Do you buy products that are well designed or function well for longer even if they’re more expensive than products of lower quality? Do you spend money to insure your safety or to establish your social position?

As a family member, friend, colleague, businessperson, or self coach you can help yourself or others be aware of how they spend money. Firstly it will be important to estimate how you are with money. How much is enough? How much time and energy are you willing to trade for money? And how can you spend money in a way aligned with your values? Money is an area that people in many cultures are unwilling to talk about in social situations. So no matter how well you mean to help someone, ask the person’s permission before you explore financial issues with them. And also do it with yourself.

NLP ways to explore how you vote with your money:

How do you want to vote with your money?

How do you decide whether a product or service is worth what you spend on it?

What are your criteria for selecting that product or service?

How much is enough?

How do you make choices about how you spend money?

Finally, how are you voting with your energy?

What do you want in your life? What are your highest values? Is peace of mind important to you? How often do you do what it takes to cultivate your peace of mind? Or is connection a high value of yours? How often do you choose to connect with people?Think of spending thoughts / actions / energy in the same way as spending money. If you spend your thoughts / actions on something, you’re voting for having more of that in your life. What mental environments are you creating with your thoughts? Do you focus on success, gratefulness, peace, or love? Or do you spend your thoughts on stress, frustration, anger, or hatred? That is a costly expenditure of your energy.

You’re living with your thoughts all the time. Notice what you most often say to yourself. Do you sort for a worst case scenario? Creativity can be a drawback if that is your inclination. You can live much of your life in a horror movie complete with special effects! Or you can spend energy on creating more productive states of mind. Whenever you consider doing something, ask “does it lead to happiness?”. When you’re happy, you’re more inclined to be generous and loving to others. So by cultivating your thoughts and creating your happiness you’re serving the greater good as well.

As a person, family member, colleague, businessperson, or self coach you can be an anchor for or exemplar of creating more productive states of mind, and help people to create them for themselves and their environments.

What thoughts will serve them well as they invest in a task or relationship?

How may they be limiting their choices by holding [onto] certain thoughts?

What would / could be available if they changed their thoughts about a certain topic?

Similarly…

How are you thinking about this / that / the other problem?

What other perspectives could you take?

How’re you making yourself suffer with this train of thought?

What different story could you create about this situation?

How could you think of this as fun or easy?

How could your thoughts serve you better in this situation?

Also, how could you lighten up on yourself and inject some humour into the situation?

If this article inspired you to vote with your money on using your energy on NLP coaching to find ways to use your time better, let’s talk about it.